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This week’s Friday Football Foodie dish was submitted by Dave’s Football Blog, home to anything foot and ball. Soccer of every color and stripe, rugby, Aussie rules, CFL, and of course, American gridiron. (Dave also runs a chill music podcast over at Dave’s Lounge, which I highly recommend.)

Dave first posted the recipe for the Hot Beef Dip back for Super Bowl XL – predicting a Steelers’ win, naturally – but this recipe is really too good to wait for a special event game, especially as we head into fall and heartier football snacking.

You will need…

1 pound ground beef
2/3 cup chopped onion (Two onions are pictured here, but I really used only one.)
1/2 cup chopped green pepper (I used much more.)
3 to 4 garlic cloves, minced
1 can (8 oz.) tomato sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (And of course anyone who has been reading FFF all season can just assume I doubled this amount of cheese.)
OPTIONAL BUT TOTALLY KICK ASS EVEN IF YOU DON’T LIKE MUSHROOMS AND NOT IN THE ORIGINAL RECIPE
3/4 to 1 pound of fresh mushrooms (In general, I am not a big fan of mushrooms, but this dip seemed similar to a beef stroganoff, so adding them just seemed natural. Also helps makes the dip taste just a touch more “meaty.”)

Finely chop the mushrooms so they reach the consistency of ground beef.

See? It even looks like beef. Now that I think about it, if you were a vegetarian, you could probably just skip the beef and make a hot mushroom dip that would be just as delicious. Good to know if you’re having Joe Namath or Ricky Williams over to watch the game.

Confession time. I am not a fan of ground beef. At some point in my youth I got it into my head that they probably did not grind up the good meat and why would I want any part of that. I was tempted to make this dish with round, aka “breakfast/sandwich” steak strips, but instead I bought some sirloin that I ground up myself in the chopper.

Chop onions. Realize the tears they draw sting less than the tears shed by the Bills as they let victory slip away from them on Monday.

Salt and pepper your meat. (STOP GIGGLING, HOLLY. You should have seen the Ladies emails this week when I said I was doing making the HOT! BEEF! DIP! for the FFF. Laughing like schoolgirls. Until I accidentally slipped up and typed “beet” instead of “beef.” Nothing puts a downer on locker room talk like beets.)

Heat a tablespoon or so of vegetable oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat.

Add the peppers, onions, and garlic. Cook until the beef has browned and the onions are tender.

Grind up your dried oregano to release the oils and add along with the sugar, ketchup – DEAR GOD THAT BETTER BE HEINZ KETCHUP AND NOT THAT HUNTS TASTES LIKE VINEGAR NONSENSE – and tomato sauce. (Yes, the tomato sauce can be Hunts.)

Add Parmesan and cream cheese.

Yes, I know there is something wonky in this photo. After almost five years of me beating the shit out of my little Canon, (really, the thing never leaves my purse and has hit the ground more times than David Carr), it is starting to go out on me. So Mom, if you want to know what get me for my birthday, a nice Amex or Visa gift card to help buy a new camera would be nice. Anyway, stir until all the cheeses are melted and let simmer for a good 10-15 minutes so it has a chance to thicken up some.

If you can, try to keep your dip warm in either a chafing dish or a fondue pot. Since I own neither, (yes Mom I know you have offered to buy me a fondue pot before, but I still do not want one) I just stuck it in my Crockpot, despite it being a little too deep for the job. Serve with crusty bread and chips.

This recipe yielded a lot of dip, so later on that night after the football guests had left, TSB made a nice Hot Beef Dip Sloppy Joe sandwich to eat while he did his Sunday night reading.

New Product Review: Kettle Bakes Salt & Pepper Pita Chips

The salt and pepper potato chip is one of great innovations in snacking the past few years, and the Kettle people were smart to take what has worked in their chips to their new pita chip line. In the past I’ve provided the portion size, calories, and salt content of what each new product. Unfortunately, the bag of these we bought went so fast there was no time to take a picture.

Sorry there is no new cocktail this week. On the day I made the Hot Beef Dip, I did it for an afternoon game that where we only had beer and such. This picture was from the morning game when we had good old Kahlua and coffee to go with our cinnamon rolls.

FFF gives a big shout out to Clare for getting the pics up for this week’s post. Our guest poster for this week had to reschedule for a later date. I couldn’t have done this without you, especially after the long night at Barney’s Beanery to watch baseball last night! [Editor’s note: You’re welcome.]

This just might be the thing for Sunday afternoon’s Patriots-Cowboys game, as I pray for a Tom Clancy-esque scenario where the stadium blows up.

Tuffy: Crockpots are for slow cooking meals like stews and chilis. You can’t really slow cook something like this with all the cheese and so on. You can try it, but I wouldn’t want to see the result. Get yourself a sturdy skillet and do it on the stovetop like a man. You can get a cast-iron skillet for $20 that will last you a lifetime if you treat it properly.

Hey, don’t knock cast iron. You can do all sorts of things with it aside from making bacon. I make pancakes in mine, and I once made some killer fried chicken with it. I was merely suggesting that if our friend Tuffy has only a Crockpot at his disposal that he would do well to invest in a quality piece of cookware. A nonstick skillet would work too. I also have a 12-inch Calphalon skillet that I got at Crate and Barrel, but it was over $100 so I wouldn’t recommend it for the occasional chef. When I make this, I’ll probably use the Calphalon one, since it’s the biggest and deepest skillet in my kitchen.

Another bachelor question: Is this something you can pre-prepare (yay redundant pre-prefixes!) and then heat up in the crock pot later? It looks delicious, but as I’ll be tailgating early in the morning on Michigan’s golf course, the only thing I’ll have access to is a grill or a crock pot.

B) Gonna disagree on the cast iron skillet. It is a kitchen essential (especially for women as it actually raises the iron content if foods you cook in it). I’ve had one for about 10 years and about as many moves. That’s way longer than I’ve had any relationship.

Of course I’ve also had a longer relationship with Erik Bedard (keeper fantasy league) than I’ve had with any woman, so do with that information what you will.

Pam, glad to know you agree about Rutt’s. The hot dogs were great, and the mess of onion rings we got on the side were amazing. If you ever go to Pittsburgh for a Devils-Pens game, you’ll have to hit the O. For three years in college, I lived no further than three blocks from that place.

Thanks Clare. I wish I had known of such a place when I went to a Devils-Pens game back in ’03. I want to go to back to Pitt when the Pens get their new arena. But this knowledge of impending hot dogs may make me come back sooner.

I’m agreeing with PC here-cast iron pan is a must.The longer you have it the better it gets. In fact, if you’re just starting out buying cookware, I would suggest that being one of the first things you buy.

I hate to parrot TSW, but “cast-iron skillet”? When I lived in Montana I supposed this is something I would have utilized quite often when I took ill-advised 25-mile hikes into the Spotted Bear Wilderness area with nothing more than a packet of Ramen and fly-fishing gear. I feel like it’s more of a fish-frying-campfire/utility-defense-mechanism than a “kitchen essential”.

And yes, the Beef Dip reheated was phenomenal. I polished it off on toast white-hamburger buns, sans anything. I’d recommend for any tailgate.

Also, what kind of guy owns a crockpot and nothing else? Surely you’ve got a set of mis-matched pots and pans that have something permanently caked to the bottom of them when you made that “experimental” chili using nothing but a can of chicken and a left-over jar of salsa?

You should have seen the Ladies emails this week when I said I was doing making the HOT! BEEF! DIP! for the FFF. Laughing like schoolgirls.

Beep beep.

Is there anyone who’s had both that actually prefers electric?

We recently changed to electric at my house and while I got used to cooking with it, I burnt everything. I’m not a cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I like making grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes for Baby Mets and it took me forever to get used to using the electric stove.

TSW: I have one of those corn shaped cast-iron skillets for cornbread – I love it because the cornbread is a little crunchier than when baked in a large skillet. And they’re cute too! My mama’s fried chicken recipe is to coat the chicken in a flour mixture (flour, salt, pepper – I add Cayenne pepper too) and then soak it in buttermilk for several hours or overnight. Then recoat it in the flour mixture before frying. Yummy!

Schrute’s Beet Farms highly disagrees that the beet is not a sensual vegetable. (Does anyone know where I can get the l/s Schrute’s Beet Farm shirt Dwight wore last week during the race?)

Was TSB drinking his beer through a straw? What the fuck?

I think I remember Anthony Bourdain once saying something like a good chef and real eating will use any part of the animal and make it taste good; don’t just use the prime cuts. Thus the deliciousness of things likes warm pigs head, bone marrow, coq au vin, and even hot dogs. That’s a principal my other foodie hero Fergus Henderson lives by.

Steve, you are so wrong. Cheese curds rule. They’re just bits of young cheese. It’s how the cheese looks before it’s formed into the brick, wheel or individually sliced format you encounter in the cheese case at your local supermarket.